How to be in Right Relationship with the World

Patty is talking with herbalist and author Maya Shetreat. They are discussing rest and turning into the quiet place for guidance.  

Maya explains that the “age of the guru” is over. It’s time for us to summon our inner wisdom. It’s a way to connect us with community and the divine feminine. Hear how she explains the way all of us can tap into our knowing.  

What does it mean to be in right relationship with the world?  

Maya breaks this down for us. It begins with wonder and truly seeing the world around us. Hear how we can be in kinship with the world around us. It’s not about being perfect, it’s about finding joy.  

How can we be in right relationship with ourselves?  

We are a sacred universe within ourselves. Maya reminds us that it’s not always about giving. It can also be about nurturing ourselves, while we nurture others. This is something we can all embrace.  

“The way that we make a huge impact in the world is actually by being in our own state of joy and aliveness.” 

Hear how to trust what you know in your heart. Our electromagnetic field comes from our heart and connects with others around us. It’s a way to look at how we feel, and it’s how we can deepen our connections.  

Maya shares how using a gratitude practice helped to create a shift in a real-world situation. This is something that doesn’t take from, but adds to our energy, creating positive vibrations for us and for others.  

We’ve been taught that things are only successful if they last forever. Maya shares how we’re meant to celebrate the completion of our life’s paths. It’s about honoring endings and beginnings and it’s an ongoing part of a life well-lived.  

Your right relationship with the world can begin today, with a few minutes of gratitude, time in nature or by honoring what’s right for you in the moment.  

 Connect with Maya:  

FB: https://www.facebook.com/drmayashetreat 

IG: @drmayashetreat 

Link to promo: www.PattyLennon.com/alive 

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0:00:04.3 S1: Welcome to the space for magic podcast, where people who are led by their hearts come to learn the secrets to receiving all the gifts the Universe has for us. I’m your host, Patty Lennon. I’m an ex-type a corporate banker, turned intuitive coach using a blend of common sense brain science and just a dash of magic, I’m here to help you create abundance in every area of your life and business. Welcome.

0:00:36.6 S2: Okay, everyone, welcome to this episode of the space for magic podcast. And this week we have a guest, which I know you all love, and I am confident that when you get to know more about Dr. Maya Shetreat, you are just going to want to dig in and learn and learn and learn. So I met Maya on a retreat. We were in New Mexico together, I believe it was New Mexico. And one of the things that fascinated me about Maya was she commanded this ancient ancient wisdom and did it in a very progressive and contemporary way, and so I could just feel how deep the roots of her wisdom went in terms of either past lives or just being so connected to her ancestors, the ancestors of what she understands and teaches, but also so alive in this particular time that we’re in and able to translate it, so it’s no surprise that the book she wrote, The Dirt Cure, was translated into 10 languages. When I met her, she was traveling all over to introduce this work to the world, she’s a neurologist herbalist urban farmer, as I told you, she’s the author of the dirt cure.

0:01:54.1 S2: She’s been featured all over New York Times. Telegraph MDR. Sky News was, Oh my goodness, she’s the founder of the train Institute, where he teaches earth-based programs for transformational healing. And so much more so with that, my welcome. Thank you so much for having me. I’m so excited to have you here. So tell me what’s going on for you right now? What’s alive for you right now… Well, I am really, really focusing on the whole idea of our commitment to rest and being quiet and doing nothing in the midst of all the business, I think so many people are in this very active state now, now that we feel more free and there’s more places we can go and we’re traveling and we’re working, and we’re seeing people, and it’s really enliven in many ways, and at the same time, a lot of us, I think, are falling into this old pattern of being busy, busy, busy, busy, busy, and not tuning into that quiet place that is always there to guide us, and I think for a lot of us over the last two years, if we didn’t already recognize that we’re in a very new phase of the world of reality where we’re questioning science experts, we’re questioning politicians more than ever, we’re questioning media more than ever, we’re questioning philanthropists and the tech billionaires, etcetera, etcetera, we’re starting to recognize that the age of the guru is over, and so we’re now in this period of having to really tune in and start to summon the wisdom of ourselves that inner voice that we have, which also is really connected to the bigger community of visible and invisible beings, so this is really like a dive into the divine feminine in a whole new way, so that’s where I’ve been spending my time lately, and with what you’re working on or working with…

0:04:32.2 S2: Because you have such a beautiful relationship with the earth, and how do I say this, just every time I hear you talk about plants or plant wisdom or the earth were being this sort of mammal on this animal, this flesh and blood being on the planet earth. Your take on it always seems to be very connected, and I’m curious if it’s your relationship literally to the earth substance, or is it something else that guide you? Well, I think it’s more about connection than anything, because I’m a physician and a scientist at the same time that I do all of this other work and explore the sacred and the mystery. For me, I’m always sort of straddling and integrating both world, so for example, when I think about… Let’s say I’m thinking about… Or plants, or really any of the natural world, I’m thinking about this universe that’s within us of microbes and mitochondria and our cells and our tissue, and all of the experiences, joyful experiences, traumas that we hold that are embedded often in our body, and then on the outside of us, there’s this universe of seeds and sun and soil, and wind and water, and just this whole world of living and non-living greater than human beings that are around us, and so we’re constantly in relationship and actually…

0:06:33.6 S2: I think our society has really given us this idea that we’re each of these individuals and we’re individualistic and we have a very us versus them mentality that’s really only gotten more and more pronounced over the last, let’s say, decade, but actually, there is no us versus them we are very much not a me, but a wet, so there is no me without we. And so for me, it’s all about, How am I in relationship? Am I in good relationship? I… Am I in right relationship with myself, with the world around me, with the land I stand on? With the invisible world. I love that. So what do you… How would you define being in right relationship or… Good relationship. Well, so being in right relationship has to do with certain principles, and they’re actually not very complicated at all, but they might not be familiar to a lot of people, so it starts with the idea of coming with wonder and awe, so that you’re in a state of amazement, seeing the miracles and the beauty in the world around you, coming with reverence. So tuning in to that sacredness. Coming with humility, so that you’re curious and tuning into your beginner’s mind rather than making demands or having constant expectations, being in a place of gratitude and appreciation, so that you’re thinking with reciprocity because we’re being given so much all the time.

0:08:27.3 S2: And sometimes we don’t even recognize how much we have and how much we’re being given and how much we’re taking, so always considering what is my offering? What is my offering? How can I be reciprocal? And in kinship, and then bringing a sense of playfulness, so engaging with experimentation and always looking for new ways and angles and playing, doing art, dreaming daydreaming, telling stories, not making yourself be perfect or try to be perfect, being light in your step, finding joy. So these are the ways that we can engage in right relationship, and a lot of them are just daily practices for me, I find a lot of the guidance for that in my time in nature, because we can see a beautiful sunrise or sunset every day, we can look at the way the light comes through be leaves on trees or hear the wind around us or listen to birds in any of those things can start to cultivate a lot of those different offerings that we have reference wonder, all gratitude are all offerings. And there are many ways, many other ways that we can be reciprocal, but those are some that can be really easy, don’t require money, don’t really require a lot of time or investment, it’s just showing up and expressing this sense of appreciation in all of these different forms well, so I’m feeling conflicted right now, do you…

0:10:21.2 S2: When you’re speaking of this, are you talking about reciprocity to the earth, to nature or to life in general, because I know a lot of people in my community, as they tend to be sensitive, tend to be over-givers, they’re deeply depleted. And I think if they were listening to this, they would certainly agree with you where they get so much from nature and that they wanna be in that right relationship with nature, but in the world in general, they feel kind of suck dry. Yeah, I think that maybe I should begin or go back to that idea of being in right relationship begins with being in right relationship with yourself, so that’s really key and really foundational, this is not about giving and giving and giving, just like we can’t… Demand of the earth to give and give and give without being reciprocal, we can’t demand of ourselves, we’re a sacred universe in and of ourselves, and we cannot demand of ourselves to give and give and give without receiving. So that goes back to that idea of rest and quiet, so this is like doing less to in a way, be in right relationship, and so it’s really not about putting out all the time, it’s more about finding that quiet place for yourself where it’s actually incredibly nourishing I think there’s very much the possibility of having a win-win, if we wanna call it that, where everyone’s getting nourished in the deal rather than, Oh, if I’m giving to somebody else, things are being taken from me.

0:12:17.6 S2: It doesn’t have to be that way at all. Like an offering, for example, could be just saying a kind word, and that doesn’t necessarily have to feel like a sacrifice or like You’re depleting yourself, in fact, I actually am very much in favor of finding what makes you feel the most joyful, the most alive and the lightest, and that can actually very much be your offering, and it doesn’t involve going around and running earns for other people or saying yes to everybody who asks for something or feeling like you have to solve all of the world’s problems. It’s actually, from my standpoint, the way that we make a huge impact in the world is actually by being in our own state of joy and aliveness, and that the way we comport ourselves is actually something other people feel and experience and are influenced by. So one of the things that I teach about in my work is the intelligence of the heart, and there’s a whole beautiful body of scientific literature, as well as a whole spiritual and emotional story of the heart that’s embedded in every culture, it’s a kind of wisdom in fact, heart wisdom, which is really interesting, we think of the brain as being where our knowledge comes from and how we know things, but if you have an EKG measuring the electrical activity of the heart and an EEG measuring the electrical activity of the brain, both hooked up to a person, they know things with their heart, first, the heart responds before the brain every time, so our hearts are actually very wise, very knowledgeable, and they also are not just These wisdom keepers, but they also emit our emotions, so we have this electromagnetic field that is emitted from the heart, measurable electromagnetic field, this is again published in the scientific literature, and it actually in trains or regulates all of the organs within the body, but it also actually creates this very powerful electromagnetic field that’s measurable up to 6 to 8 feet around us, and some people call it the bio-field, but this electromagnetic field is measurable and it actually combines with the electromagnetic fields of those around us, anything around us really, because people are not the only creatures or entities with electromagnetic fields, a tree can have an electromagnetic field, a rock and have an electromagnetic field.

0:15:14.3 S2: In fact, the Earth has its own very powerful electromagnetic field, and this isn’t like EMF, the way we talk about the kind of artificial or synthetic AMS that are created with, let’s say cellphones or things like that, it’s actually our own innate field that we all have, so there’s actually a way to look at how we’re feeling through the electromagnetic field, and so for example, the way that you can feel somebody, like let’s say you’re sitting at the table and somebody that you live with comes home, your roommate or your kid, or your partner, and you know, before they even say a word or do the heavy SI or anything that they’ve had a really bad day, you just know… You haven’t even looked at them yet. That is part of you. Your electromagnetic field actually perceiving their electromagnetic field, so one of the really interesting ways to engage with that is that if you’re in a place of appreciation and gratitude, it actually is something that can be measured through that field based on our heart rhythms, actually, which is totally wild, it predicts how we’re feeling joy, excitement, sadness, being meditative, or gratitude and appreciation, and when we’re in that state of gratitude and appreciation, it actually influences the people around us to feel differently and act differently without us even saying award.

0:16:52.8 S2: So to me, that is an argument, or that supports the idea that nourishing ourselves, taking really, really good care of ourselves, coring, joy and aliveness into our lives, so that we can feel filled with energy and be in a great place. That’s actually the best way to give to other people is by giving to ourselves in that way… Oh, that’s a totally different take on it. I love it now, and that’s interesting that you say that, ’cause years ago, I had seen this study, but I lost track of it, and so I’ve told people about it when I’ve been in a room giving talks and discussing the value of having a higher vibration, a higher level of courage, let’s say, or empathy. And in the study that I had read, when you’re in a yoga class and you’re not able to get into a particular Asana, usually because it’s a scarier one, like a head stand or something, that if you’re within five feet of someone else successfully doing that cost, you’re so much more… Exponentially more likely to be able to do it. And on and on, the examples when… I’m curious, do you think this is what that is? Is that sense of being able to feel someone else’s courage and not take it from them, but to…

0:18:27.0 S2: I don’t know, borrow it. Or be inspired by it. Well, it’s sort of like a positive contagion, we think of being contagious as something bad, but it’s actually very possible for things to be in the other direction, so in that way that your field combines with the field of others, you’re always moving to the higher vibration and actually, some people, if they can’t reach that higher vibration, they’ll fall away, right, and that actually is something that we can see in our lives where, especially as we go through awakenings or these initiator experiences that some people as you change and become perhaps more awake about certain things or start to recognize who you really are in a deeper way and pull back that skin of the onion, for some people, they just can’t, they can’t do it and they do tend to fall away during those times, and that sometimes can be that you’re in a certain vibration, actually, that they’re not able to maintain. But in terms of, yeah, being around people and feeling a sense of courage that you can receive from them, it’s absolutely not something that takes anything or that you’re borrowing, but in fact, it’s a way that you experience the shared field with them, and so it influences you and I’ll actually tell you a different story that I think will demonstrate it.

0:20:02.8 S2: I had one of the people who studies with me had a traffic ticket and it was actually like a really… She had to go to court, and it was really stressful because it was like number whatever ticket and there was just like this concern, are they gonna suspend their license, etcetera. So we did this sort of ritual, basically like a gratitude practice, and he went in to court, did this gratitude practice really, really deeply and earnestly, went into court, basically had to stay almost nothing. And the judge was like, I’m dismissing this. Wow, nice. So I’ve done that with people again and again with getting jobs, with just creating shifts in difficult situations or in situations where they might have felt fear or un-worthiness or whatever it may be, so that they can overcome or actually not overcome, but set the vibration of the encounter, and actually it’s like a generosity, you’re coming in with this great vibe and literally creating positive contagion so that the people around you or the beings around you are also in that great vibe. And what it means is that, yeah, maybe things are gonna work out better for you if it’s in your highest good, but also they’re gonna feel great when we know that we have a whole literature that actually looks at when you’re in a state of gratitude and appreciation, what’s called coherence? In the scientific literature, you’re actually less likely to have any psychiatric symptoms, even if you have like bipolar or schizophrenia or major depression, you’re less likely to have any symptoms…

0:22:07.0 S2: Your symptoms improve. Heart rate. Heart attacks go down. Blood pressure goes down. PTSD symptoms improve. And on and on and on. I mean, there’s just a whole really beautiful literature that shows that essentially being in coherence in the state of appreciation changes your physical health, it changes your mental health, and basically when you’re operating in that place, you’re also changing the state of the people around you without any effort. They’re just perceiving it. It’s the positive contagion, so it’s actually the opposite of depleting rather than… Something that you have to give of yourself. I just love this. It’s explaining things to people. I think in a way, what you’re saying is walks alongside of things I say, but you’re saying them in such a different way, grounding them in the sciences, so… Good, so you were… Well, I’m putting it in the past tense, and maybe I’m mis-speaking, but you were in more of a traditional western medicine setting at one point, weren’t you? And now you’ve shifted. Well, I trained in conventional medicine, so I’m trained as an adult and pediatric neurologist, and I’m pretty promptly out of my training… Much to their dismay, started practicing integrative medicine.

0:23:36.1 S2: I became an herbalist very, very quickly, I became faculty and an integrative medicine program at University of Arizona very quickly. So I never really practiced from… After my training as a conventional doctor, but I was trained conventionally, totally conventionally and did medical school and did residency and did fellowship, and the whole nine. And then as time went on, I began to evolve further into studying with indigenous healers, exploring my own indigenous lineage that for various reasons had been really forbidden to me, even though my father’s family is indigenous from Morocco, so there was a lot of shame around that in my family, and it was really like a closed off thing, so there was a big opening there, getting to know that part of myself and studying with teachers and really engaging with the sacred and with mystery, and to me, it’s beautifully dovetailed with my work in medicine and science, and although I don’t practice medicine in the way that I used to, I don’t just do medical work, I do a lot more work, spiritual work with people and do coaching, and I work with micro-dosing and I work with my institute, the train Institute, training people.

0:25:14.3 S2: It feels like that has been a really important foundational part of my journey… Well, I was going somewhere completely different, but now this other question is coming to me because I know there’s people right now that are feeling that they built this life, whatever this life is, whether it’s a marriage, a career, a way of being… And the world has shifted so tremendously and now mystery, the unknown, something is calling them, and there’s this leap of faith that has to happen, they have to let go of something they’ve invested a lot of time, money or energy in maybe all of them, and reach for what they’re being called to, and you did there so early on, what would you say to someone who’s in that situation… Well, I’ll say I’ve done it many times, and it’s an ongoing process, but what I’ll say first is that we have these soul contracts with ourselves and with people around us and with identities that we embody for periods of time, and sometimes those contracts… And that doesn’t mean they’re a failure, it doesn’t mean we’re necessarily having to give up, but it’s just there’s completion, and actually, even though it doesn’t always feel easy to reach that completion, it actually is an achievement to recognize when there’s completion and that it’s time to birth yourself into a new identity or a new career, or a new relationship, or a new kind of life, and we spend our lives going through periodic death and rebirth, and that’s actually, I think a life well-lived is to not be stagnant, to not stay stuck in something that’s outlived its purpose.

0:27:28.2 S2: Our society is really engaged and kind of pushes the idea that things are only successful if they last forever, and I think that’s just absolutely untrue that we are meant to go through these spiritual death and rebirth and awakenings and initiations and embrace these identities, as you know again, we peel back the onion and just become more and more authentic and true to who we are in the moment, and that doesn’t mean blow everything up all the time, right? We have to operate with discernment, and that’s what I love about doing spiritual coaching with people is really tuning into that call and tapping into that discernment, but ultimately this is really about honoring endings and honoring beginnings. So good. That’s really so beautiful. And I think so hard to do sometimes if you don’t have the right support, how do you work with people… So I know you have programs, do you work… People exclusively in those programs. Do you work with people privately? And what does that look like? So I do spiritual coaching with people, I actually also… Because I’m a life-long learner, I’m a Hellenistic astrologer, I do ancient astrology. So in the spiritual coaching that I do, people can buy package and we do their astrology, we might look at their numerology, we might do different rituals or ceremonies, I might coach them through micro-dosing, if that’s something that feels in alignment.

0:29:23.3 S2: So that’s one way I work with people. And then another way is taking them through my programs where I’ve really curated a lot of the sacred knowledge and the Science that I’ve kind of married together and… It’s not like super science-y. It’s just kind of… It’s integrated, right? So there’s just a way to be able to kind of… I always say I have a really sensitive BS detector, and to me, Science and sacredness are very, very connected because science is a language to describe the mystery, and there’s a lot of languages to describe the mystery, so I love that I can speak that language and that I understand something about that language, but I also like speaking a lot of other languages, and most scientists, the great scientists are also mystics, So I curate that kind of body of knowledge and all my travels and all the elders I’ve worked with, and what I know about plants and animal spirits and ancestor work, and all of that kind of sacred knowledge into a seven-week ceremonial journey, it’s called the seven weeks ceremonial journey to feeling utterly alive, so that’s one way that people can work with me, and then I have my deeper dive, which is my certification program, which I actually call a DE-certification program, because it’s so much about unlearning and beginner’s mind and being reborn in a certain way, it embracing those parts of ourselves that wanna really expand and be in their big ness.

0:31:11.4 S2: So that’s another way, and some of those people will work with me throughout in a one-on-one way, so I can really support them deeply through their journey, and then I’m going to be launching a training program for people who want to work with clients around psychedelics, and that’s not because I’m so, so into psychedelics, but because I think that they are actually a way that they’re expanding the medical language around health and healing and well-being to talk about the physical, the mental, the emotional, and the spiritual. And I think that we really are going to need people who are gonna have that kind of fluency, and there’s such beautiful potential for healing if we are in right relationship with all of those medicines that are about to really blast into the mainstream. So that is another offering that’s going to begin in early 2023, but we’re gonna be opening applications in the Fall of 2022, so it’s exciting stuff coming up, so if someone was listening and is hearing your wisdom on gratitude about getting into right relationship, about coming alive, I love that. The seven-week program would be where they can start right now, it’s a great place to start yet because they can join any time.

0:32:42.9 S2: Okay, so if you go to pattylennon.com/alive, whatever is alive in my sword will be what’s at that link, so that will be… Right now, when this goes… When this program goes live, you can access that program page, and if they wanted to work with you privately, How do you like people to contact you, they can go right through my website, so there’s a spot where they can actually… They can just go to drmaya.com, and there’s a page that says, Work With Me, and it will give you all the instructions and options, and how active are you on social media, or where are the other places people can kind of learn… You learn from… You do all the online things. Yeah, so I’m most active on Instagram, and so that’s a great place to go through some of my content and see what I’m up to and what I’m teaching about, and I also have a Facebook page also, Dr. Maya, she treat and everywhere your doctor may issue treat on all the platforms, right? Yeah. Okay, so if you’re listening, check out my as programs and all of her close…

0:34:08.0 S2: Yeah, Soma do you have any last words of wisdom in this crazy time that we’re in right now, I think the one thing that I would say would be the biggest takeaway is to really give yourself that time to tune in to that inner voice and just give yourself the quiet, whether it’s daydreaming, whether it’s listening to music, whether it’s getting outside into nature with no real demand of yourself, even if it’s just for a few minutes every day, if that’s all you have to really give yourself that sense of spaciousness and permission and allowing because that’s when the really magical messages and epiphanies and just nourishment can enter in and make you feel more alive. So good. Oh my goodness. Well, thank you for being here. It’s always a pleasure to spend time with you, I’m so glad those of you listening go to dive in a little bit to this wisdom, so just go check out what my has going on. You can go to Palin dot com, alive or go directly to Dr. Maya’s website.

0:35:26.2 S1: Alright, thank you everyone, thank you. May have a great day. Hey, thanks for listening. If you know someone who needs to hear this message, please share this episode with them, and if you’re feeling really generous, I’d love for you to leave us a review at your favorite podcast app, it helps us reach many more people and it fills my heart with so much joy when I hear what you have to say about what I’ve shared. I’m cheering for your success, have an amazing day, and don’t forget. Always create space from magic.

0:36:10.0 S2: This podcast is part of the soundadvice gm network, sound advice FM, women’s voices, Amplified